


Demonology

by trueunbeliever



Series: Bloodline [2]
Category: Criminal Minds, Supernatural
Genre: BAMF Dean Winchester, Case Fic, Demonic Possession, Demons, Episode: s04e17 Demonology, Fairies, Gen, Wee!chesters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-05 03:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1803415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trueunbeliever/pseuds/trueunbeliever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just months after their last encounter, Dean receives a call from a distressed agent. A dead body in Quantico brings Dean to the home of the FBI to investigate what may be a case of demonic possession, but the problem takes on a life of its own, leaving Dean to wonder whether he's in over his head.</p><p>[On Hiatus.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fight the Fairies

**Author's Note:**

> Happiness, Fearless Readers! I'm back! Yay! Wooooo! Okay... maybe not... Anyway, here's the promised fic. It's a sequel to Bloodline, and it's set a couple of months later (taking place during s4e17 of CM: Demonology), so it doesn't necessarily follow canon timeline in the CM sense. Hope you like :)

_Stupid, stupid Winchester. What the hell were you thinking?_ Dean ran through the brush, trying his damnedest to outrun them. He was just happy he’d thought to train that morning despite the Hunt, so he was quick and limber as he ran, only slightly winded after the first half-mile. He could keep going, he knew. He could run for all he was worth, straight through the fifteen mile dense-as-hell forest, without a pause as he’d done countless times before, but with them following, he wouldn’t make to the end of the first mile.

It was his own fault that Sammy wouldn’t know what happened to him, Hunting in the forest without all the facts. Damn disappearances pointed straight to a windego attack—he’d taken out a half dozen with Bill already—but of course, as he’d been told not to, he’d _made_ the evidence fit, overlooking anything that would have pointed to the fucking fanged fairy freaks that were trying to kill him. It was obvious now that thinking it was a windego was the stupidest thing he’d ever thought. First solo Hunt in six months and he had to go and screw it all up.

 _Goddamn it_!

Dean narrowly avoided tripping over a fallen tree trunk, but by the time he righted himself, they were too close to avoid. Claws scraped across his back, digging in enough just to draw blood, but not enough to completely incapacitate him. He ran harder and faster than he had before, pushing himself to the limit even as the distance between them lessened. One pounced on his back, bringing him down with its tackle.

 _What the hell ever happened to the winged bitches from fairy tales? These things are_ huge _!_

And they were. They came up to his waist, these scaly pink creatures with forked tongues and fangs. If Dean hadn’t already been familiar with demons, he would have thought they resembled the ones he’d seen in Bobby’s books. They were light and boney, but they were _strong_ he soon found. The one on his back twisted him down to the muddy forest floor, not loosening its grip any, even when Dean fell on it. Then a half dozen of the creatures were on him, biting, clawing, tearing.

Dean held in his cries of pain, knowing that showing any weakness to these predators would be a mistake. Instead, he fought. He got one square in the face, knocking it unconscious before it could bite him. He broke another’s arm. He flipped two others off of him, clearing his line of sight, then gasped at what he saw. They were everywhere. It wasn’t just the dozen he’d seen when he stumbled into their clearing or even the half-dozen that tackled him. It was a hundred of the things, at least.

Dean despaired.

There had to be something he could do. Bobby’d spent who knows now long teaching him every piece of myth and lore he could learn. He could exorcise demons in ten seconds flat, cut a vampire’s head off in only three cuts of his Hunting knife—through the spine and _everything_ —and all it had taken to kill that damn mermaid he and Bill took on was a swift kick to the jaw and a hex bag to bind it, three minutes in total; it had been a bit of a disappointment. But fairies? They weren’t supposed to _exist_. Sure, he knew they were real, but they were in a separate _plane_ , detached from the human world, different even from the spiritual plane that ghosts and demons existed on. Their planes weren’t supposed to connect, _ever._ This was big. This was _huge._

Then despair hit him again that he wouldn’t be able to tell Bill or Ellen or Bobby what he’d seen because he was losing too much blood now and there were still so many fairies to fight, each wanting a piece of him. There had to be something. Salt wouldn’t work, obviously. They were probably the most pure creatures in existence according to the lore, so it wouldn’t stop them. Iron could have worked to sap the creatures’ power—it was like a magical lightening rod—but he didn’t have any on him, so that was out. Silver was out for the same reason as the salt, and so was holy water.

 _Fire_.

Dean knocked another of the creatures off of him, noting that he couldn’t keep conscious for long with the blood loss, and grabbed the flare gun he’d brought to kill the windego. _Stupid Winchester_. He took two out with one shot, reloaded, took out three more, clearing them off of him, but there weren’t enough flares to kill the whole lot of them and they were converging fast.

Dean pushed himself up on his feet, ignoring the stabbing pains of his wounds. He didn’t care that he was without shoes now, or that his wounds were most definitely going to be infected after this Hunt from the amount of dirt and gunk that was getting in them.

Dean ran.

He pushed himself forward again, doing his best to use the forest to his advantage. He pulled back branches to fling at his pursuers, used his long legs to propel him over obstacles. It wasn’t enough. They were on him before he could make it a hundred paces.

Dean was pressed again into the ground, claws digging into him. He fought with a purpose now. If he was dying, he was going to die fighting. He reached into his pockets and pulled out his gun, surprised that he hadn’t thought to use it before now. _Stupid Winchester_. That was the problem with having a partner. He’d gotten used to someone there backing him up. He’d gotten sloppy. He fired the entire clip and tossed the gun to the side. It wasn’t any use to him without bullets and if he needed to run again, it would just weigh him down. He grabbed his knife next. It was silver, not that it seemed to be of much use—the things kept healing themselves and piling right back on him—but he used it anyway, looking for another opening to run.

It became a pattern—stab, dodge, block, stab—and after a while, he even thought he might win. Unlike the other things he’d Hunted, however, fairies were smart. They bided their time, waiting for their own opening. Dean knew it, just like he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep from giving one. Then it happened. The adrenaline in his system wore off, the blood loss caught up with him, his arm tired, and his knife was gone, taken by a fairy as he tried to stab. He was weaponless.

Dean saw the glint of the knife coming toward him and moved to dodge even though it was useless to try. It was too quick for him to get far enough away, and he was too tired, too sore to block it. It got him in his arm the first time, his side the next, both just flesh wounds, but both painful, forcing his eyes closed as he bit back a scream. He prepared himself for a third swipe of the blade, flinched for it, but there was nothing.

Dean opened his eyes, shocked at what he saw. The frenzied fairies were completely still, all staring at him with wide eyes that held an overanxious expression Dean had only ever seen on underfed vampires that were too terrified to do the deed. But they weren’t staring at him like he expected. They were staring next to him, where the fairy had cut him with the knife. Dean followed their line of sight to the small pile of salt collecting next to him from where it was spilling out from his now-torn jacket pocket.

_What the hell?_

With their attention on the salt, Dean shifted slowly to pull himself out from under the baffled fairies. They jumped collectively when his hand brushed the pile, scattering the grains of salt, and he cursed internally. Of course. Right when he had the opportunity to escape, he had to go and screw it all up by being careless. _Way to go, Winchester_. But the fairies didn’t attack, didn’t even move except that single shocked jump.

Then Dean was out of the way, looking at the fairies in wonder while he tried his hardest to keep his head from spinning. It was then that they pounced. All at once, the fairies attacked the salt with the same frenzied look in their eye as they’d attacked him with.

Dean stumbled back a few steps and grabbed hold of a tree trunk to steady himself . He looked down at his torn pocket. _Salt_? He didn’t really care what the reason was, only that it worked. He grabbed a handful of salt from his pocket and threw it into the crowd. They didn’t show any sign of knowing he was standing there, but the pace of their swarm increased over the grains of salt and Dean though it time to hightail it out of there.

He made it the ten miles to the road in just over four hours. It was too long in his opinion, but it couldn’t be helped. His left leg was practically dead weight after being twisted under him not once, but twice, and the rest of him ached worse than after that poltergeist had decided to use his body to play fetch with the vengeful spirit he’d been trying to exorcise a few months back—good times. All he knew, as he opened the driver’s side door to the Impala, was that he needed a hot bath and a week’s worth of sleep.

Dean took a minute to feel relief pour over him at the fact that he was not, in fact, dead and could live to fight another day before he got down to business. He grabbed one of the cell phones from the glove box and hit speed dial number two.

“Where the hell you been, ya ijit?” Bobby’s voice rang loud and clear from the other end.

“Taking a nature hike with some fairies. Had a nice tour of the forest,” he joked conversationally, wincing when his chuckle set off a pain in his chest. Yep, definitely had some cracked ribs. Damn, those fairies hit hard.

“Fairies?” Bobby sounded both intrigued and mystified at once. “That’s impossible. Are you sure?”

“Well it sure as hell wasn’t a windego,” Dean said. “I wandered into this clearing—perfect circle, Bobby; you should’ve seen it—and these pink things just started running at me. Fangs, claws, the whole nine. Came about waist-high, looked like one of those creatures straight outta that one book you have, with the green-gold spine.”

“The with the blank pages?”

“That’s the one. They were vicious little fuckers, I’ll tell you.”

“You injured, boy?” Bobby asked, angry for some reason Dean couldn’t place.

“Nothin’ I can’t handle,” Dean said defensively, but it was the truth. Some antiseptic and a needle and he’d be a-okay in no time.

“How far are you?”

“About a state, give or take a city,” Dean said, sighing in defeat. Bobby was no doubt going to make him drive the ten hours to Sioux Falls just to make sure he was alright. Ever since John was arrested, he’d stepped up big time, but it was a little annoying to still be treated like he was a kid.

“East? West?”

“Southeast,” Dean said. “I’m in Illinois.”

“Good. It’s only about a two day drive from there. You’re gonna wanna head east pretty quick.”

 “What?” Dean asked. It wasn’t anything even close to what he thought Bobby was going to say. Another Hunt? Now? Normally, he would have been thrilled, but this time even he couldn’t deny that his injuries were too extensive to be ignored. He wanted a little TLC, maybe take a detour to stop and see Sammy for a couple of days. He didn’t need another Hunt. Besides, Ellen would kill him if he even _thought_ about Hunting in his condition.

“Got a call from the FBI,” Bobby said, and Dean could hear the smile in his voice. Ever since he’d gotten Penny back, his spirits soared whenever they ran into the FBI, even on the high-profile Hunts that would much sooner land them in prison than in the FBI’s good graces. Penny was FBI, so the FBI was practically family to Bobby. Dean supposed it couldn’t really be helped. Besides, it was good to have a few contacts, especially one who could match anyone but Ash in the computer department.

“What’d Penny say?”

“Wasn’t Penny,” Bobby said, surprising Dean. “You’re gonna wanna hear this.”

Dean heard some shuffling, a thunk, and curse, and some more shuffling before Bobby came back on the line.

“Alright,” Bobby said. “Listen to this.”

A woman’s voice flooded the phone’s speaker and Dean was surprised to discover that he recognized it.

“ _Dean? It’s, uh, it’s Emily. Prentiss. Emily Prentiss. From the FBI? I need your help. I think… Look, just call me back, please? It’s important._ ”

Then the line went dead and the hair on Dean’s neck stood ramrod straight. He remembered the last time they’d met, when John was arrested and Azazel wanted to come out and play.

_Brains can stick with brains, but the muscle’s coming with me._

_Since when am I the muscle?_

_Have you seen yourself in the mirror? I know the type. You could probably kick more ass than Ellen, and that’s saying something._

She’d smiled then, even though they were going to face the stuff of everyone’s worst nightmares. Something had to seriously be wrong to have her as scared as she was on that message. Her voice was shaky, sounded seconds away from crying and just that fact alone was _wrong_. Prentiss was the kind of chick who didn’t let things bother her. Whatever was going down was big.

 _It’s important,_ she’d said.

“You have her number?” Dean asked Bobby.

He rattled off a string of numbers that Dean wrote in the small notepad he kept in the car.

“I’ll call you when I’m there,” he said.


	2. Two Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 is here! Read on!

It took two days for Dean to make it to Virginia, longer than it should have in his opinion. Despite what he thought while running through the woods, his wounds would likely heal well on their own. Before he even _thought_ about driving out to Quantico, he’d stopped at a rundown hotel, paid for three hours, and took the time to shower, change, and stitch himself up. There were more scratches than anything, and only four groups of bite marks where different fairies had bitten over and over in a single spot. Those hadn’t needed anything but some antiseptic and a bandage.

He did, however, need to stitch where the blade had cut, since both wounds were deep enough to continue bleeding even after he’d bandaged them up. He didn’t take anything for the pain while he stitched the wounds, not wanting to wait another day to begin his drive, so it hurt, but he worked quickly. He taped his ribs, sure that they were either bruised or cracked, but not broken, and changed his clothes. Then he was gone, on the road to FBI headquarters.

It took him two days to get there. He was too tired to not stop the first night and three highways were closed down the next day, forcing him to take the traffic jammed freeway part of the way there, keeping him on the road an extra six hours. By the time he pulled his baby into the nearest—and by nearest, he meant cheapest—hotel to where he needed to be, the sun was just coming up high enough over the buildings to beam directly down on him.

He dialed the phone number quickly, surprised when the call went straight to voicemail.

 _“You’ve reached Emily Prentiss. I am unable to answer the phone right now_ …”

Dean hung up, cursed the fact that he forgot to call in advance—though he was sure he could blame that on his injuries; his head just didn’t _feel_ right—and called Bobby.

“Yello,” Bobby answered.

“Bobby? It’s Dean. Can you get me Penny’s number? Prentiss’s phone went straight to voicemail.”

“Give me a minute… Yeah, here you go.”

Dean scribbled the numbers on the pad and closed the phone, set on ringing Penny when his cell phone rang, an unfamiliar number flashing across his screen.

“Yeah,” he answered, not wanting to give his name.

“Dean?” It was Prentiss, and she sounded even worse than she had in the message. “It’s Emily—Prentiss,” she corrected. “I need your help.”

“I got the message,” Dean told her. “I’m in town now. You and the team come across something?”

She hesitated. “Not really. It’s… personal.”

 _Okay?_ “What do you need?”

“Can you meet?” she asked. “It’ll be easier to show you.”

Dean was suspicious, but he agreed. “One o’clock. Coffee shop. Adams and Third.”

There was a pause and Dean imagined her writing it down. She seemed like the type of person to make sure she wouldn’t forget something important like this. She would have made a great Hunter, and he could imagine her journal crisp, clean, and detailed. Hotch probably had wet dreams about her reports.

“I’ll meet you there,” she said, and the line went Dead.

He only had an hour, but that was plenty of time to scope the place and make a few arrangements. There was no harm in making sure Prentiss was actually Prentiss before he helped her. As he knew from experience, bad things could happen when you weren’t careful.

 

* * *

Prentiss hung up the phone and nearly collapsed in relief. She knew she could have gone to her team with this. Normally, she would have gone straight to Hotch and presented the case, would have asked him to have the team look into it, but it wasn’t an FBI case. It was a Hunter’s case. Within minutes, Dean could tell her whether she was wasting her time with the things that go bump in the night or whether she needed to arm herself with salt and iron—as if she didn’t already have those with her at all times.

One hour. One hour and she would know for sure whether Matthew was murdered or whether he was possessed. All evidence pointed to a possession, but from what she’d seen of Morgan’s and those people in the diner, the human bodies were fine afterward. They didn’t die from the possession itself, but from physical injuries they’d sustained during the possession.

A heart attack. That was what the report said, a heart attack. Matthew had died of a heart attack. Demonic possession wouldn’t kill him with a heart attack, would it? Prentiss didn’t know. She didn’t know enough about demons to know how they killed when they did. She knew they were mean, nasty sonsabitches—true psychopaths in every sense of the word—that liked to inflict fear and pain on any creature it came across, especially if said creature was human. They wouldn’t kill with something as simple as a heart attack, would they?

No. She shook her head. Of course not. They would stab and maim and torture. They wouldn’t let their meat suit die from a heart attack. They would make it painful and frightening.

But she shook her head in defeat. There were too many factors for her to consider, too many things that could have happened for her to feel comfortable making a decision on her own. That was why she’d called Dean in the first place. Dean could help. Sure, Bobby had more experience with Hunting, but she didn’t know him as well as she knew the kid. They’d fought side by side, true comrades in arms, against some horrible odds and had come out nearly unscathed—she was still surprised she’d made it out of there with nothing more than a small scar on her wrist from where she’d hit a table. Dean would know without asking how important this was. He would tell her immediately what he knew, would help her without question.

Then she sighed a third time and shook her head again before she left her apartment. Dean was only fourteen, not even old enough to drive and she was placing all of her faith on him, on a kid. It wasn’t fair to her. It wasn’t fair to _him_. He already had enough to deal with without having to handle her problems. The guilt would have eaten her alive if it wasn’t for the desperation holding it at bay. She needed to find Matthew’s killer. It was the least she could do to honor the memory of the smiling boy she’d known. It was the least she could do for everything he’d done for her. It was the least she could do for ruining his life.

The coffee shop was far from quiet, definitely not a place Prentiss would have chosen to meet, but then she saw the corner table Dean had secured outside and understood why he’d wanted to meet there. It was public for one, limiting the odds of an attack—a supernatural one at least. It let him see in every direction, had multiple escape routes, and gave him an advantage over his opponents—though who his opponents would be, she didn’t know. And, probably most importantly, it was far enough from where she’d been that, even if she’d left as soon as she hung up, Dean would have had enough time to scout the place and ready it before she got there. He was probably staying close by then.

And then Prentiss stopped analyzing and focused on why she was there. It didn’t matter to her why Dean had chosen this particular coffee shop. All that mattered to her was finding Matthew’s killer. Dean could help, she knew. All she had to do was present the facts.

 

* * *

Dean was well aware of Prentiss’s approach, but he allowed a small amount of surprise to show on his face anyway. In all actuality, he _was_ a bit surprised, though not at her approach, but her appearance. She was barely holding it together, and it showed, even through the mask of confidence she projected. He’d caught the same look in the mirror enough to see right through it. No doubt, if _he_ could see it, the team could too. They had to be worried about her.

“Prentiss,” Dean greeted.

“Winchester.” She copied his tone and sat when he motioned to the seat across from him.

Calling the place a café was a stretch. It was more like a mini-restaurant, without the courtesy of a burger. It didn’t matter, though he promised himself to stop off as soon as he could to grab some real food. Food wasn’t why he’d chosen this place. The waitress—barista, he corrected himself—came by with two small bowls of fruit that he’d ordered in advance. Prentiss looked surprised, but she picked up her fork quickly enough to eat.

Dean looked closer at her and realized that she probably hadn’t been sleeping or eating. The first thing he needed to do, even before he took the case, was to get her up to Hunting health. This no-sleep, no-food, bordering-on-obsessed focus she’d adopted was weighing her down enough to make her a liability on the case. Besides that, it wasn’t healthy. Sure, there were cases that made him the same way, but this was about her, not him, and if he could convince her to get a good night’s sleep before they started, all the better.

The first piece of fruit hit her mouth and Dean crossed shapeshifters off of his list. Dean took a sip of water and she followed suit, removing demon as a possibility as well. There were a few other things she could have been, but those were the two biggies he could eliminate right off the bat. The others would only be disproven with time. For now, he was pretty certain that she was who she claimed to be.

“Satisfied?” Prentiss asked him.

He quirked an eyebrow in question. “Not sure what you mean,” he said.

“Really?” she sounded somewhat amused, but a little angry at the same time. “Silver knife. Holy water. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

Dean shrugged, nonplussed. “Can’t hurt to check,” he said. “You can’t tell me you didn’t expect it though. Just be happy I’ve had practice spotting silver irritation on a shifter without having to cut, otherwise you’d be sporting a small scar on your arm. Well,” he amended. “Another scar.”

Prentiss grimaced and rubbed the scar in question, her eyes distant, remembering. “Yeah,” she mumbled, trailing off.

Dean leaned forward in his seat, creating with the single movement, a small bubble of space around them. “Whatever’s eating at you, you know I’ll do whatever I can to help, right?”

Prentiss looked at him, taken back by his forthrightness. “I know,” she said. Then she handed him the folder she’d been clenching in her ghost-white hands—and Dean would know, he’d seen plenty of ghosts to compare them to—trusting him with everything.

He flipped through the photos, looking with trained eyes at the obvious exorcisms-gone-wrong, noting the ligature marks, the age of the victims, the locations the bodies were found, the times, the personal information. He sorted through it all, filtering things out, mentally adding information to the folder and marking areas for further review. He tried to be clinical about it, looking at the corpses, but he couldn’t help but compare the long hair and hazel eyes to Sammy, seeing his brother cold on the slab, dead from someone performing careless exorcisms on higher-level demons.

It bothered him more than it should have, but he didn’t let it deter him from his job. There was no doubt in his mind that he was going to find whoever was performing the botched exorcisms and, at the very least, kick his ass. Then he was going to find the demon that was still floating around and send it back to Hell the _right_ way. There was nothing he hated more than people who came in way over their heads and didn’t ask for help from people who knew what they were doing. It was overconfident, smug sonofabitches like this that—

“So,” Prentiss said, trying for nonchalant, but failing miserably. “Is it your kind of problem?”

Dean looked at her over the case file, making and keeping eye contact. “Without a doubt,” he said.

With just those three words, Dean watched the tension drain out of Prentiss, relief that she wasn’t crazy, that she’d made the right call, that there would finally be some closure, that she would have some _help_ , because there was no doubt in Dean’s mind that she’d kept this all a secret from her teammates.

“But,” he added, ruining what little relief she’d allowed herself to feel. “It’s also _your_ kind of case. There’s a human Unsub mixed up in all of this, and we’re gonna need the team to find him. At the very least, we’re gonna need Hotch.”

Prentiss nodded. “You’re right. If it’s an Unsub, we’ll need to go through official channels.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Plus, it couldn’t hurt to have some backup.”

Prentiss looked confused. “Backup? If we need backup, shouldn’t we call Morgan?” She didn’t look all that confident in Hotch’s ability to have her back.

Dean quirked an eyebrow. Didn’t she know Hotch was a Hunter? Judging from the look on her face, obviously not. He smirked at her. “I’ll call Hotch,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 will be posted this Sunday :)


	3. Hotchner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N 6/24/14: Sorry, Readers. This fic is officially on hiatus. Over the weekend, my laptop crashed and had to be restored, erasing everything I had on it. Luckily, I backup my computer every month, so a lot of my work was saved. Unfortunately, that doesn't include anything I wrote in the last three and a half weeks, leaving this fic at four chapters instead of the eighteen that I had written. I'm going to post the remaining two chapters that I have saved now, and I'll do my best to rewrite what I had before, but I can't promise that I'll finish or that it'll even be good. 
> 
> For those of you wondering about the Death Counted ficlets, all but two were saved, as well as most of my side projects. "Demonology" was the biggest loss. Another week to polish them up (again), and I'll start posting them. "Demonology," however, is going to remain on hiatus until I can get it back to where I want it. Sorry again, everyone. Chapters three and four are here. I'll post a fifth chapter with an A/N to let you know when it's going to be continued, then replace it with the official chapter as soon as I get it all up to speed. I DO plan on continuing this, but I don't know how long it'll take. Sorry again, Readers.

The hotel was exactly what he expected—a shady, rundown building that brought on too many memories of rotting corpses found in alleyways, with tenants who wouldn’t ask questions, and seedy managers that were just as bad. To think that Dean pretty much lived out of these hotels was depressing to think about, but Hotch turned a blind eye to it. It couldn’t be helped. Dean couldn’t afford to stay anywhere nicer and, unfortunately for a Hunter’s life, Dean needed to surround himself with people who lived simply by ignoring things that didn’t concern them.

He knocked on number fourteen, three quick reps, and stood still so Dean could get a peek of him through the peephole. It wasn’t long before the man in question—Dean wasn’t really a kid anymore, hadn’t been for a while despite his age—opened the door and let him inside.

“Hey, Hotch,” Dean said, swinging the door wide, inconspicuously scanning him for hidden weapons and threats.

There was no doubt in his mind that Dean knew about both guns—the ones strapped to his hip and ankle—and the knives he’d taken care to hide on him as well. The go-bag was more conspicuous, packed with a week’s worth of clothing, just in case. It was only a glance, but Hotch was sure the Hunter had taken it all in before he could even step past the salt line into the room.

“Come in. Toss your stuff wherever. We’re probably not going to be here long enough for you to unpack though.”

Hotch did as Dean asked, setting his bag in the corner. Prentiss leaned, arms crossed, against the dresser and Hotch pressed himself opposite her, against a wall. He was equal parts irritated at the fact that she'd gotten them wrapped up in this and relieved that she'd called in for reinforcements when she was in over her head. It said a lot about her character that she had, but he didn’t need to like that it was _him_ who was now in the thick of things. 

"I'm not staying here," Prentiss said to Hotch. 

Hotch quirked an eyebrow at the tactic. If she was hoping he would pull rank and go against Dean's orders, she was sorely mistaken. He may outrank the kid in the real world, but Dean was the senior Hunter, and if Prentiss couldn’t see that, couldn’t follow Dean’s rules, then she definitely wasn't coming with them on this Hunt. 

"So," Dean said, speaking over Prentiss, directly to Hotch. "I talked to Ash. Turns out there's another body.”

"Did he send the files?" he asked. Dean had gotten things done so quickly—it had only been two hours since he’d called. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but Hotch wasn’t used to working with someone so young, and despite the fact that he knew how much responsibility the boy had on his shoulders, it was hard to keep it in mind. It was a paradox. On the one hand, Hotch couldn’t see Dean as the child he should have been; instead, he could only make out the tired set to his features and the necessity of his actions. On the other, he was still so young, and thoughts of his age would creep into his mind at the most inopportune moments. He just hoped that, whatever happened, he wouldn’t let them get in the way.

"Yeah,” Dean said. “Sent them directly to the laptop. I figured you wouldn't want him to email them to you, so I have the only other copy."

Hotch nodded. "Thanks." He could get in much more trouble than it was worth if someone like Strauss found this kind of material in his possession. 

Dean didn't even acknowledge the thanks, moving on to another topic of discussion. 

"Don't know how you want to play this, but I'm thinking we need a peek at the bodies."

Hotch flipped through the coroner's reports and silently agreed. The information they needed wouldn't be anything the coroner would have deemed important. "After hours?" Hotch asked, dreading the answer. Being caught in the morgue in the dead of night would ruin him. 

But Dean smirked and Hotch knew that he had a plan, even if he wouldn't like it. 

"I'm thinking we go as partners. The Rookie and the Senior Agent. So long as we have badges, no one's gonna question us. Besides," he smiled suggestively. "I look damn good in a suit." 

Hotch put his head in his hands. Why had he decided helping Dean was such a good idea again? Then Prentiss spoke and Hotch realized that he wasn't just helping to prevent more victims from popping up in his city, but that whatever was happening was personal for Prentiss, and he would do anything to help a member of his team. They were practically family, after all. 

“Or,” she interjected. “Hotch and I could go.” At the plural expressions of doubt, she argued, knowing this time that Dean was the one to be convinced, not Hotch. “It would be perfect,” she said directly to the boy. “Hotch and I are _real_ agents so we wouldn’t be breaking the law. We could just say we were looking into the death of a friend, just some harmless curiosity, which is pretty much the truth. You don’t want to get Hotch in trouble,” she finished lamely when her argument didn’t seem to be working. “We’re still in Quantico. People would recognize him and it would get out that a rookie—who doesn’t exist in any of the FBI files, by the way—was accompanying him. How long do  you think he’d actually keep his job? I mean, you don’t want him to lose his job, right?”

That, if nothing else, gave Dean pause. Hotch could see the wheels turning in his head, and the look Prentiss gave him held an increasing amount of hope. He really didn’t want Prentiss in on this Hunt, even if it meant losing his position as unit chief. There were too many unknown variables and Prentiss was less than subtle in anything she did, especially when she was emotionally attached to a case. Still, Dean knew this, and if he wanted to let her in on the Hunt anyway, Hotch would support the decision.

“No,” Dean said, shaking his head. His eyes were unrelenting, even against a woman who was able to break a hardened criminal down to a whimpering plea of guilt. There was no misinterpreting it for an assent to her argument. He wasn’t saying, _No, you’re right. I don’t want Hotch to lose his job_. He was saying, _No, I don’t care what the argument is; you’re staying here_.

It was harsh, harsher than Hotch would have thought him capable of, but then again, at his core, Dean did whatever he had to do to save as many people as possible. If that meant Prentiss looked away in disappointed shame, then he would, even if he didn’t like it.

“She’s right though,” Dean amended. “Too many people know you here. Word could get out. You sure you wanna risk that?” he asked.

Hotch just shrugged. “If something comes up that I can’t handle, I’m sure Ash or Garcia can take care of it.”

Dean turned contemplative, carefully ignoring Prentiss in her sulking, and spoke slowly. “I think we should bring someone in,” he said. “I know a few Hunters who could play fed without arousing suspicion if you’d like, but I’m with Prentiss. A kid wouldn’t be subtle.”

Hotch didn’t miss his grimace at the word ‘kid,’ and while a part of him wanted to convince Dean that he was far from a kid, the larger part of him was saying that the both of them were right. They needed a look at those bodies, and having Dean there would be more trouble than it was worth. “I can go alone,” he offered. “If it’s just the morgue, I should be fine as long as you’re outside to back me up.”

Dean nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised of something’s keeping an eye on the bodies. Some demons get attached to their meat-suits, and from the beating the first guy took, I’d be willing to bet that it’s just looking for a chance to slip right back in.”

Prentiss’ chin jerked up, eyes flaring at Dean. “His name is Matthew,” she said coldly. “And he was a good guy, not a meat-suit.”

Dean was shocked, but before he could respond, Prentiss turned away from him and locked herself in the bathroom.

“Shit,” Dean said, not the first time Hotch had ever heard him curse, but surprising nonetheless.

He didn’t bother comforting Dean. Not only would he take it for weakness, something no Hunter should ever show, but Hotch would be lying if he said Dean was treading lightly. There was a reason Prentiss wasn’t allowed in on this case. It was too personal for her, and Dean stepped in it when he forgot that. Still, the Hunt came first and Dean’s next words didn’t really surprise him.

“If you’re going alone,” he said slowly, eyes still on the closed bathroom door. “You’re gonna need more than a couple of guns. Let’s get you suited up. I’m sure we can do the morgue run tonight. It’s still early enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter...


	4. Morgue

It had taken _forever_ for the medical examiner to leave as far as Dean was concerned. Then again, it was probably just because he was nervous to have Hotch inside the morgue alone, looking at the body _without him_. Sure, he knew Hotch had been on a few solo Hunts, but as far as he knew, they were simple salt-and-burns and monsters that could be put down with a bullet, not anything that could have demons on his tail, or worse, something that could get him fired. Damn Prentiss, she was right. He should have called Bill for backup. Having Hotch in on this was too dangerous. As if it wasn’t already too damn late for that.

“ _What am I looking for_?” Hotch asked, voice calm and collected, as if he wasn’t risking his life to check out the demon’s mea—Matthew’s body.

“He have any tattoos?” Dean asked. He thought he read something about tattoos in the ME’s report, but there wasn’t a description other than the placement.

“ _Two_ ,” Hotch said. “ _Shoulder and hip_.”

“What do they look like?”

There was a rustle of a sheet before Hotch spoke. “ _One is… a woman in a bikini straddling a carrot_.” He sounded both surprised and disgusted. Dean had to agree. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? At least _his_ tattoos were practical. “ _The other is some kind of symbol_.”

“Can you get a picture of it?” he asked.

“ _Already done_ ,” Hotch said.

A ping sounded on his phone with a message from Hotch. “Give me a sec,” he told him. “It’s downloading.”

“ _It says here that he’d sustained quite a few small fractures that the ME thought were from a fall that must have happened weeks before, judging by the amount they’d already healed over._ ”

“Yeah,” Dean affirmed while the last of the picture downloaded. “It was a demon. When they use a body, they ride ‘em hard. Most of the time, it gets a little uncomfortable if whatever body they’re wearing has any major injuries so they usually heal them up enough so they can’t feel it.”

“ _At least he didn’t suffer as much as he could have,_ ” Hotch said.

Dean didn’t bother to correct him. Just because a demon healed the body enough that _it_ couldn’t feel pain, didn’t mean that whoever was inside couldn’t feel it anymore. Matthew had to have been walking around on two half-broken legs for weeks, not to mention whatever else the demon had tried to get away with, before it was exorcised. Dean could only hope that the demon had gotten so tired of Matthew’s screams that he’d gone unconscious.

“ _There’s something else that’s strange. The wounds seem to be concentrated to his upper torso, wrists, and ankles.”_

“We already knew that,” Dean said, wanting him to get to the point.

“ _Yes, but the second tattoo, the symbol I sent you? There’s a single laceration through it that seems almost deliberate. The others were possibly from the struggle, even the few on his upper torso could have been from whoever was doing the exorcising, but this one looks as if it was done purposefully. If we can figure the tattoo’s function, I’m sure we can begin an accurate profile of our Unsub,_ ” Hotch said.

Dean wasn’t so sure about the profiling part, but if they were after a human Unsub then he was letting Hotch hold the reins on that one. The picture finally came through on his phone, and Dean let out a curse.

“ _What is it?_ ” Hotch asked, his voice deceptively calm.

“The tat just came through. I know what it is, and it’s not gonna help us much.”

“ _What is it_?” Hotch asked again, but this time the question was tinged with disappointment.

The tattoo was simple, but powerful, Dean knew. It was easy to draw and definitely came in handy when he needed to question a demon and didn’t want it smoking out. There weren’t many people who knew enough about Enochian sigils to use it, but a quick ora could trap a demon in its meat-suit long enough to get whatever information you needed.

“Did you say it was cut? Single laceration?” Dean asked, ignoring Hotch’s question.

“ _Straight through,_ ” Hotch confirmed.

Dean was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. “Time-wise, when in the exorcism was it made?”

“ _Give me a minute,_ ” Hotch said, the sound of paper rustling in the background telling Dean that he was flipping through the report quickly. “ _It looks like it’s the freshest of the wounds._ _What is the tattoo of, Dean_?”

“It’s the closest thing a demon has to a jail cell outside of Hell. You better get out of there, Hotch. I think I know at least a little about what’s going on, and the last thing we need is for the demon to show.”

“ _On my way_.”

Dean listened to Hotch make small talk with the medical examiner, a nervous anticipation flooding through him at the thought of being trapped outside if the demon confronted Hotch alone, and released a small breath when the agent stepped outside, wincing against the cold.

“Nice and toasty in here,” Dean called as he pulled up to the curb. When Hotch was situated, hands held up to the blazing heat of the vents, he continued. “We gotta to go back to the hotel, and I need to call Bobby.”

“What’s going on, Dean?”

Dean hesitated.

“If I’m going to be in on this, you need to tell me.” Hotch’s voice was hard.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell Hotch. It was more so that he was regretting bringing the agent—the _father_ —in on this without knowing all of the facts. If he’d known it was something like this again, he would have wanted Hotch as far away from this thing as possible.

Dean cleared his throat. “It’s an Enochian binding sigil,” he said, deliberately staring out of the windshield. “It can be used for a lot of things, but mostly it’s used to trap a demon inside of a body.”

When Dean glanced over, Hotch looked confused. “Why would anyone want to _keep_ a demon in a body?” he asked.

Dean was shocked again at how _innocent_ he was. Hotch had seen the worst humanity had to offer on a daily basis, almost as bad as the things _he’d_ seen, but for some reason, Hotch still held onto a small piece of himself that couldn’t even imagine things like this. He was _confused_ , dammit. Dean felt another slice of shame go through him for dragging the man into this.

“It’s, uh, mostly used for—“ he cleared his throat “—questioning.”

Dean didn’t need to glance over to know that Hotch’s lips were pressed into a thin line.

“When a Hunter needs information,” Dean continued, “they sometimes bind a demon to the body so it won’t smoke out mid-torture. You remember when Bobby needed to question the thing that was in Morgan?”

“Yeah,” Hotch said. His voice was even, but Dean was sure the conversation as affecting him in more ways than one. “How do _you_ know about it?” he asked. “You didn’t come into the picture for days after.”

“Bobby told me,” Dean said. “If he hadn’t used the ora, there wouldn’t have been anything keeping the demon inside the body long enough to get any info out of it.” He saw Hotch nod in his peripheral vision, but his lips stayed pursed in distaste. “The point is,” he continued. “For people who know what they’re doing, an exorcism should only take five minutes, unless you’re trying to gather info.”

“Was there evidence of demonic torture in the ME’s report?”

Dean shook his head. “No way to tell, but that doesn’t really add up. Normally, the sigil is _carved_ into the skin, not tattooed onto it. This was something long-term. No only that, but there should have been much more damage to the internal organs if the demon had been in for a long enough period of time to justify a tattoo, but there wasn’t.”

“Other than the heart, everything else was in good condition,” Hotch added, supporting Dean’s theory. “What does it mean?”

“That means that it was used for questioning, but that that wasn’t the only function. The demon was probably trapped in the body before, but for some reason hadn’t wanted to damage the host.”

Dean snuck a peek at him, watching light dawn in his eyes.

“A jail cell,” Hotch repeated.

Dean nodded. “Whatever this sonofabitch was, it was bad enough that someone felt the need to trap it.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, Readers :( The official hiatus has begun.


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